Hannah McNeilage/Donald McLachlan

[Scottishlassie]

Hi I’m looking for this couple. Both of them were born in Scotland and immigrated at different times.
They married in the USA

Hannah McNeilage was born on 1 January 1883 in Kilwinning, Ayrshire. She had six sons and five daughters with Donald McColl MacLachlan between 1907 and 1925. She died on 23 December 1959 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, at the age of 76, and was buried there.

There is no record of Hannah’s birth

I believe that Hannah may be my great grandmother. And somewhere along the lines I may find my biological father.

[Alan of Kaslo]

Have you seen these photo's of them before?

Donald:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uAF4LlLDHtG6tH12FZSxz2-BKlz0oVi4/view?usp=drive_link

Hannah:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12r6BAOqotiwg8j_4fn7UQ2ewtG1B9-sl/view?usp=sharing

[Forfarian]

Welcome to RootsChat

What is your source for Hannah's date and place of birth?

I see from the 1920 US census that she emigrated in 1909. Have you found her in the 1891 and 1901 census in Scotland?

Was McNeilage her maiden surname, or could it have been the surname of a previous husband?

Have you seen her marriage certificate and if so what else does it tell you?

[eilthireach]

A search for all Hannahs born in Ayrshire in the years 1882-1883 (just in case she or a family member was misremembering the birth year) brings up no Macneilages. And a search for a Hannah aged 7 or 8 in 1891 Ayrshire brings up no Hannah Macneilage. No Hannah Macneilage births anywhere in Scotland in 1882 or 1883 and searching just on the surname 1881 to 1885 we find, interestingly enough,  an Alice Hannah Macneilage, but she was born in Campbeltown, Argyll, in 1885, and she married in England (Salford) in 1906)! "Indexes to Naturalization Records, 1890-1992" (on Ancestry https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/115833:2897) for Hannah Maclachlan brings up an image of the index card giving the details she obviously supplied at the time. Birth in Snodgrass (misspelled as Snudgrass) 1 Jan 1883 which she believed was in the Parish or District of Kilwinning. The Gazetteer for Scotland shows that there was indeed a place called Snodgrass in Ayrshire (in the Parish of Irvine) but that still doesn't help. This could well be a case of someone thinking they were born in the place of which they had their earliest memories but they were actually born somewhere else.

Her husband Donald was born 19 April 1883 in Bonhill, Dunbartonshire (Entry no. 164 in the Register of Births for 1883 for the Registration District of Bonhill, Dunbartonshire). The image of the headstone on Findagrave shows that it bears the wrong year of birth (1882).

[eilthireach]

Welcome to RootsChat

What is your source for Hannah's date and place of birth?

I see from the 1920 US census that she emigrated in 1909. Have you found her in the 1891 and 1901 census in Scotland?

Was McNeilage her maiden surname, or could it have been the surname of a previous husband?

Ancestry has an image of the card with her details as given when she was going through the naturalisation process in 1955 ,,, Image attached shows that she stated the date of her arrival in the US was November 1903 at Boston (She also states her place of birth as Snodgrass (misspelled as Snudgrass) in Ayrshire (The Gazetteer for Scotland shows that was a settlement in the parish of Irvine, Ayrshire, not Kilwinning)

Have you seen her marriage certificate and if so what else does it tell you?

[Kloumann]

If it helps anyone searching. Donald McColl McLachlan, b 1883, Bonhill, Dunbartonshire, MMN, Black.

[Forfarian]

The attached document from the RI census gives a different date of birth, and the 1920 census says that Donald immigrated in 1903 and Hannah in 1909.

Also, it's fairly common for record keepers to interpret 'yyyy' as '01-01-yyyy' so she was not necessarily born on 1 January of whatever year she was born.

She also seems to have got her parish of birth confused.

So the best that can be said from the information found so far is that Hannah was born some time around 1880-1883, most probably in Ayrshire.

This is the description of Snodgrass from https://scotlandsplaces.gov.uk
SNODGRASS; Authority for spelling Robert Dunlop. (Tenant), John Stewart. Bartonholm, Robert Blair. Eglinton Iron Works. Kilwinning. A Good Farm Ho [House] & out offices Occupied by the Tenant, under Earl of Eglinton. the Proprietor.

See it on the map at https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.0&lat=55.63372&lon=-4.70591&layers=257&b=1&marker=55.62809,-4.70969 - beside the River Garnock, which is the boundary between the parish of Irvine and the parish of Neilston. It has been completely obliterated by later developments.

There are no obvious records of (H)ann(a)(h) McNeilage in either the births index or the census indexes. So we need to look for less obvious ones. For example, could Hannah have been illegitimate and registered under a different surname? Could she in fact have been born somewhere else and brought to Snodgrass before she was old enough to know? Why did she think Snodgrass was in the parish of Kilwinning? The law required all births to be registered, and if Hannah's was not, why not?

So many questions, so few answers

[Kloumann]

There was a McNeilage family in Irvine, John & Jane, who had 2 sons, one of which would be about same age as Hannah. No sign of any Hannah's living with them on 1891 or 1901 census.

[Forfarian]

The 1910 US census says that Donald and Hannah had been married for 3 years. If so, they must have been married in 1906 or 1907. Therefore the date of immigration of 1909 given by Hannah in the following decennial census in 1920 has to be incorrect.

Have you seen Donald and Hannah's marriage certificate?

I see that their daughter Margaret (1909/10) had a middle initial B. What was her full middle name? It might give a clue to her mother's name. Unless of course it's Black after Donald's mother.

Their other children
Son Alexander (1907/8) after Donald's father
Son Donald (1911/2) after his father
Daughter Lily (1913/4) after her father's sister
Thomas 1915/6
Jessie 1919/20 possibly after her father's sister
Mary 1922/3
Anna 1924/5 after her mother?

Could, therefore, Hannah's parents have been Thomas and Mary?